Album of the Day

V, by Spock's Beard (2000): From my first Beard experience yesterday, to the end of their glory days, in my opinion. In fact, it's sort of paradigmatic Beard, distilled onto one album: a couple of well assembled epics, the obligatory Gentle Giant vocal homage, and a few shorter more direct tracks (of varying success). There's nothing really new here, and it seems like the band plateaued (at least) from here on out. In fact, when it first came out, I didn't much care for it as it felt too "Beard by numbers." In the years since, I've come to enjoy it a great deal, however.